Conference turris::womannotes-v2

600.0. "Women in Engineering" by MOSAIC::TARBET (I'm the ERA) Mon May 15 1989 13:24

[this article comes courtesy of Ann Marie]
    
                       Elizabeth M. Fowler
 		 The New York Times, April 18, 1989

    "Things haven't changed much for women in engineering in recent year's"
    according to Helen Hollein, a chemical engineering professor at
    Manhattan College.  She made the comment as a panelist last week at a
    discussion about women engineers at the Electro-89 convention in the
    Javits Convention Center. 

    "It is still difficult for them," she said, offering this advice for
    women engineers who have children: "Don't take seven years off the job
    as I did. It is bad for the career path."  Dr. Hollein said the swift
    technological changes in the engineering field made it very difficult
    to re-enter the market. 

    Dr. Hollein, who is the wife of an engineer and has three children,
    gave up her career for seven years to live abroad with her husband, an
    engineer for the Exxon Corporation.  Later, Dr. Hollein, who graduated
    from the University of South Carolina, said she found it difficult to
    get back into the profession because of the changes in the industry.
    So she chose to get a doctorate in chemical engineering at the New
    Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. 

    Anna Longobardo, who has a bachelor of science and a master's degree in
    mechanical engineering from Columbia University and has been a
    practicing engineer for about 35 years, solved the problem of raising
    two children by taking short maternity leaves and hiring household
    help. 

    Mrs. Longobardo stressed the need for women engineers with children to
    employ household help.  Women engineers receive good starting salaries
    - about equal to men's - although later progress for women tends to be
    slow, she said. 

    In her case, her husband, who now works for the International Business
    Machines Corporation, was able to offer plenty of support.  Today Mrs.
    Longobardo is the director of field engineering for the Unisys
    Corporation. She directs a staff of 700, most whom are male engineers. 

    "There is a glass ceiling for women in engineering management because
    so few women have been in the pipeline like me for promotion," she
    said.  "I would hope this situation would change in the next decade." 

    "When our generation of children, raised in a more flexible way, is
    established in the work force, we will notice a change," she said,
    adding that questions raised at the meeting by young women engineers
    were "pretty much the same 30 years ago" as for as the impact of
    marriage and children on a career. 

    She listed some erroneous beliefs about women as engineers, namely that
    they lacked goals, gave up too easily and were not comfortable in their
    roles as engineers.  "We women need to develop our self-esteem," she
    said. 

    The group of panelist was led by Eleanor Baum, dean of the school of
    engineering at Cooper Union, in New York, who said she was the
    country's only female dean of an engineering school.  Eileen M.
    Burkhardt, an engineer at Grumman Aircraft Systems, was also on the
    panel. 

    Women engineers have good formal educations but need a master's degree,
    Dr. Baum said.  The panelists agreed that women engineers should take
    company training courses and volunteer for special projects, In
    addition, Dr. Baum said, women engineers should join committees, do
    more public speaking and attend more professional meetings, as well as
    take occasional courses to keep up to date.  Reading professional
    journals, perhaps working part time when children are young and
    visiting colleges and schools to encourage more young women to enter
    engineering were other suggestions made by the panelists. 

    The country needs more women engineers, Dr. Baum stressed, suggesting
    that without more "we are missing the creative force of a large part of
    the population."  So far only 6 percent of working engineers are women. 

    Furthermore, she pointed out, only 16.5 percent of undergraduates
    currently majoring in engineering are women, a percentage that has not
    changed much in five years.  Women represent more than 40 percent of
    enrollment in law schools and 35 percent in medical schools, according
    to the latest figures available form trade groups. 

    In a telephone interview, Susan Metz, the director of Women's Programs
    at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., a leading
    engineering school, was somewhat more optimistic than the panelists. 

    "Women need more role models." she said, explaining that this situation
    could be helped when more women have doctorates or master's degrees in
    engineering so that they can teach at colleges or high schools.  "We
    have only two women professors at Stevens," she said, adding that other
    engineering schools also have few women professors. 

    "I think a bigger problem we have now is keeping women undergraduates
    in the engineering curriculum," she said.  "Some programs have
    management options and women often take them. 

    There is psychology involved, she said.  "Engineering is the most
    difficult undergraduate curriculum," she added.  She said a study of
    women in engineering concluded that women often would try another major
    if they did not get A's and B's.